How Apple plans to update new iPhones without opening them

Unboxing a new gadget is always a fun experience, but it's usually marred somewhat by the setup process. Either your device has been in a box for months, or it's just now launching and ships in the box with pre-release software. Either way, the first thing you have to do is connect to Wi-Fi and wait several minutes for an OS update to download and install. The issue is so common that going through a lengthy download is an expected part of buying anything that connects to the Internet.

But what if you could update the device while it's still in the box? That's the latest plan cooked up by Apple, which is close to rolling out a system that will let Apple Stores wirelessly update new iPhones while they're still in their boxes. The new system is called "Presto."

French site iGeneration has the first picture of what this setup looks like. It starts with a clearly Apple-designed silver rack that holds iPhones and has a few lights on the front. The site (through translation) calls the device a "toaster," and yes, it looks like a toaster oven or food heating rack.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has been writing about whispers of this project for months, saying in one article that the device can "wirelessly turn on the iPhone, update its software and then power it back down—all without the phone’s packaging ever being opened." In another article, he wrote that the device uses "MagSafe and other wireless technologies." The iGeneration report also mentions that the device uses NFC, and there are "templates" that help with positioning the various-sized iPhone boxes so the NFC and wireless charging will work. With that wireless charging, downloading, and installing, all while being isolated in a cardboard box, Apple's "toaster" probably gets pretty hot.

No one has explained exactly how the system works, but we can make some educated guesses. Even when an iPhone is "off" or discharged, it's still possible for the NFC chip to work. Apple Pay and digital card keys are already set up to work with a low battery. Placing a box in the Presto oven would presumably trigger the NFC chip, wake the OS, and cause the phone to boot into an Apple-only unattended update mode (hopefully, there is a lot of security around this).

NFC's maximum data rate of 848 kbit/s means there's no way you could send an OS update over that connection, but that quick burst of data is good enough to wake the phone and pass it an SSID and password for a Wi-Fi connection of some kind, which pretty much has to exist in the Presto oven somewhere. With wireless charging powering the phone the whole time, it will have plenty of juice to connect to the Internet, download the update, and install it.

The idea of updating a phone in its box is a uniquely Apple proposition, as pulling it off requires end-to-end control of the device. It will take a lot of work put into the hardware, software, box design, and the unique phone oven itself, and the system will require an army of Apple-controlled retail stores that are committed to updating the devices. That's a huge amount of work just to avoid the minor inconvenience of the initial setup download. Only Apple would think to do this.

Some software support for the Presto box is already built into iOS 17.2, so it sounds like it's just a matter of rolling out the hardware at Apple Stores. Gurman's report from earlier this week said the rollout would start in April for the US and finish by the summer.